5 Rupees

Ceylon's Government Currency Notes — as distinct from the Ceylon Government and later Central Bank series — occupied an awkward institutional space: technically issued under the authority of the colonial government rather than a central bank, they circulated through a wartime economy that was simultaneously a major Allied supply hub and under genuine threat of Japanese naval pressure in the Indian Ocean. The 1942 raids on Colombo and Trincomalee forced the colonial administration to take emergency currency precautions, including contingency destruction plans for notes that might fall into enemy hands.

De La Rue printed this series in London throughout a period when the firm's own facilities had been damaged by the Blitz, making production continuity a recurring logistical problem across multiple colonial currency contracts simultaneously.